


Not the Jealous Type

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Police, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship Jealousy, Humor, M/M, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, War Veteran Sam Wilson, War Veteran Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: “Oh, I get it,” Tony said, smug little grin playing across his features. “You’re all angsty because your partner took time off to hang out with his war buddy, and you’re cooped up here doing paperwork. Is that it?”“Did I not just say to leave it alone?” Sam huffed in response.





	Not the Jealous Type

Sam Wilson was not jealous. He wasn’t.

Because getting jealous over your best friend having another best friend? That wasn’t something Sam Wilson did. That was something pre-teen junior high girls did. And Sam Wilson was certainly not a pre-teen junior high girl.

So he wasn’t jealous. Really.

 

“Friendship jealousy. It’s a thing,” Clint told him, while Natasha nodded sagely.

“Yeah, remember that time Carter called Barton her bestie? Thought Nat’s eyes were going to bulge out of her head,” a flippant voice cut in, and Natasha turned and glared at the interloper in the lab coat.

“Who the hell let you out of your dungeon, Stark?” she asked, frowning from where she sat on the edge of Clint’s desk. 

The man in the lab coat held up a manila folder. “I come bearing particulate results,” he declared, pulling them swiftly out of her grasp when she reached for them.

Natasha gritted her teeth. “Tony…” she warned.

He chuckled and dropped the folder into her waiting hands. “Your gunshot vic had traces of fertilizer in the wounds. Specifically a ritzy organic blend of milled sea kelp and bat guano. Brand name is in the file. We found the same stuff on the casing from the scene. So your shooter…”

“Hid the gun in a fucking bag of fertilizer,” Natasha said, shaking her head as she stood and reached for her jacket and sidearm. “Damn it, Clint, I told you it was the god damn gardener. The vic was banging her husband and she fucking knew about it.”

Clint stood to follow. “Hey, I never said it wasn’t the gardener!” he protested. “I just said we needed to cover all of our bases…”

The two bickered as they walked out of the room, most likely heading to see Judge Fury about a warrant. For partners, Sam silently mused, they argued like cats and dogs. By the look of the deep scratches down Clint’s back that Sam had spotted in the gym that morning, they screwed like it too -- but he wasn’t even about to open that can of worms. 

 

Realizing he had been abandoned by his friends in his hour of need, Sam huffed an annoyed sigh, watching as the precinct lab director sat on the edge of Clint’s abandoned desk and retrieved a bag of almonds from his lab coat pocket. He offered them to Sam and, once refused, popped one into his own mouth before speaking.

“So what’s got you so bitchy today?” Tony asked, crunching on his snack as he spoke.

Sam glared. “Leave it alone, Stark,” he warned.

“Oh, I get it,” Tony said, smug little grin playing across his features. “You’re all angsty because your partner took time off to hang out with his war buddy, and you’re cooped up here doing paperwork. Is that it?”

“Did I not just say to leave it alone?” Sam huffed in response.

Tony Stark seemed to know how to tap dance on the last nerve of just about everyone in the precinct. Worse still, he was brilliant, and ran the cleanest forensics lab in the county, if not the state. Irritating as it was, he was a boon to the department and sure as hell made Sam’s job a little easier, as well as everyone else’s. 

Even if he seemed to have made it his life’s mission to give everyone a hard time.

“I get it’s a pain in the ass when Rogers isn’t here to pick up the slack -- I mean, shit, when Banner went on sabbatical, I had to keep the lab running on my own for weeks -- but shouldn’t you be the one guy here who gets it?” Tony pressed on, chewing thoughtfully. “Brothers-in-arms and all that.”

Sam exhaled hard through his nose, annoyed mostly because he knew that Tony was right. He and Steve saw eye to eye on a lot of things, due in no small part to the fact that both were combat veterans, Sam having served in the Air Force, and Steve in the army. And he knew what it meant to see a buddy finally return home -- or not return at all.

 

He was pretty sure he was the only one who knew Steve’s full history with his army buddy, Bucky: friends since grade school, enlisted together straight out of high school, served in the same unit, looking to go career. But just after they had extended into their third tour, Steve had gotten the news that his mother was ill; he ended up taking a hardship discharge so he could take care of her. Bucky was still overseas when Sarah Rogers died, but some friends it high places fixed it that he’d be allowed emergency leave.

“I don’t think I’d’ve made it through all that without Buck,” Steve had confessed one night, glassy eyed over a few beers. Sam simply nodded; he understood loss too well.

Sam had been in the precinct the day that Steve got the call some months ago, and watched in burgeoning horror as the color drained out of his partner’s face. He knew Steve didn’t have any family left, so there was only one thing in the world that could draw that reaction from him. Sam had felt his own panic start to claw at his chest, remembering with sudden clarity a dark night over Afghanistan, when he watched his own brother-in-arms, Riley, fall out of the sky during a standard paratrooper mission. Even sitting at his desk in the squad room, he could swear he could still smell the gunpowder and feel the heat of the explosion.

“Steve?” he asked, watching as Steve hung up the phone with a shaking hand.

“It’s Bucky,” Steve told him, clearly forcing himself to regulate his breathing and not go into a full on panic. “It’s… it was an IED.”

Sam swallowed hard. “Is he…?” he started, not wanting to say the words.

“Stabilized. Airlifted to a base in Germany,” Steve told him. “They don’t… it’s bad, they don’t know…” His voice broke and he held his face in his hands, unable to continue. Sam slipped away quickly to their Captain’s office, letting her know they needed to leave. Captain Hill had some time in the military herself and immediately understood.

Sam had driven Steve home and sat with him in his apartment, trying to keep him calm while they waited for more word. Early the next morning the call came from Bucky’s sister: he was out of surgery, there had been some complications, but he was going to make it. Sam had an arm over Steve’s shoulders while he wept in relief.

That had been months ago. Bucky had chosen to continue his recovery at the base in Germany, not wanting to come home until he was whole again. Steve had meted out the details to Sam as he had received them, learning that an injury to Bucky’s left radial nerve had been irreparable, and he would receive an honorable discharge, his career in the military effectively over. 

“He can still use the arm and the hand,” Steve explained, flexing his own fingers as if to illustrate what he was saying. “They transplanted a tendon from his leg so he could. But his fingers go kinda numb and there’s a tremor they can’t stop. Not something the army wants in a sniper, you know?”

Steve had been in the best mood Sam had seen in months when he came in just that Monday morning and announced that Bucky was coming home, moving in with Steve while he got his life as a civilian on track.

“I think I got him convinced to go back to school,” Steve had said, smiling. “I think he could do a lot of good that way -- maybe be a teacher or something. Kids’d love’im.”

Sam couldn’t help but smile in return, if only to see Steve that happy. He knew that Bucky was the only family Steve felt he had left. It would be nice to meet the guy, see if he lived up to the stories Steve had been telling since they’d first partnered up.

Sam leaned back in his desk chair and sighed. “Yeah,” he relented. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Good,” Tony announced with a nod, and stood, throwing his empty almond bag into the trash can beside Clint’s desk. “Cos I was sick of seeing you dragging your mopey ass around here looking like somebody stole your big blonde puppy.”

Sam frowned, throwing a pencil at Tony. “Man, get the hell back to your lab!”

 

Sam’s goodwill on the matter hung around for about a day and a half. He kept telling himself it was perfectly reasonable that Steve take a leave of absence to hang out with his newly returned best buddy; they had no open cases, after all, and Steve had more than enough paid time accrued. Plus, it gave Sam a chance to catch up on his paperwork, and maybe peruse a cold case file or two. 

He did his best to push his annoyance away, until Saturday morning found him running the track at the gym alone. 

It was a standing appointment between the two. Steve was adamant they both keep in shape; they had fitness exams to consider, after all. One of the night shift detectives in their precinct, a man by the name of Quill, had developed something of a paunch in recent months, and it seemed to make Steve even more determined than ever.

Sam had been frankly frightened by the slightly manic look in Steve’s eyes.

“Can’t get soft,” he insisted. “Gotta keep in shape. We may not be patrol anymore, but you never know when we’re going to get dragged into a foot-chase or a shootout. Can’t let your guard down.”

“Constant vigilance?” Sam asked dryly, thinking Steve would make a fair Mad-Eye Moody for Halloween if he channeled this energy into a costume. (Sam himself would be Harry, obviously.)

Steve’s usual sunny smile broke out on his face, not catching the reference and assuming Sam was on board with his fitness crusade.

“Exactly!” he agreed, giving Sam a quick pat on the shoulder. “C’mon, twenty laps and then we’ll hit the weights.”

Sam didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had been being sarcastic. Steve was like a big goofy puppy that way; most of the time you didn’t want to be bothered by his exuberance and wild ideas but the more you got to know him, the harder it was to say now.

“I oughta just adopt a cat, be done with this shit,” Sam mumbled, and started to jog, following Steve who was almost halfway around the track already.

After that, it was sacrosanct: Saturday mornings were at the gym with his partner, barring hangovers, extended casework, or hook-ups. Steve had frowned and given Sam a slightly disapproving look at that last caveat, but Sam put his foot down. Steve might have been saving his purity or whatever it was he currently was doing -- Sam knew he didn’t date, but he didn’t pry, they were friends and partners but it only went so far -- but Sam was human and needed a little companionship from time to time.

So to find himself alone at the gym at seven in the morning, sweat on his brow that reeked of the overpriced beer he had been drinking the night before with Tony, of all people, because Sam didn’t want to pony up for a Showtime subscription and Tony had a huge screen tv that would be playing the Lipinets-Garcia fight, had him livid.

Steve had Showtime, Sam knew, and HBO too. The asshole.

 

Sam was aflame with righteous fury as he took the stairs up to Steve’s apartment two at a time. He had made it to the gym that morning after a night of too much Tony and too much beer, Steve surely could have pulled himself out of whatever dive bar he was running his buddy around to long enough to take a few laps on the track.

Or at least send a damn text message; that was standard protocol.

“Constant vigilance my ass,” Sam grumbled. He was tired, a little hungover, and pretty god damn pissed at dragging himself out of bed to show up for Steve’s grueling morning workout only to find himself alone. He needed to vent, and who better to listen than Steve himself?

“Rogers!” he called, pounding a fist on Steve’s apartment door. “Get your ass up and answer the door, you dick! I don’t care if you got a hangover!”

It took only a moment for Steve to answer the door, frowning. “I don’t really get hangovers,” he said, puzzled at Sam’s arrival.

Sam glared and pushed his way past his partner and into the living room, knowing full well that Steve had allowed him that trespass; the guy had to be at least 180 pounds of muscle, there was no way Sam was moving him with so simple a shove unless he was letting himself be moved.

With a sigh, Sam flopped onto the couch.

“Fine, no hangover,” he agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then what the hell is your excuse for not showing up this morning?”

For his part, Steve certainly looked bewildered. He was standing on the edge of the carpeting that separated the living room from his small kitchen, blonde hair sticking up every which way and a crust of sleep still in his eyes, wearing only a pair of dark blue boxer-briefs.

Sam politely averted his eyes.

“This morning?” Steve echoed, rubbing at his right eye and stifling a yawn.

“The gym?” Sam reminded, wondering if Steve didn’t have some sort of head injury. It certainly wasn’t like the man to give up a chance to torture Sam through calisthenics. 

Steve yawned again. “The gym?” he repeated. “Oh, shit, is is Saturday? Sorry, I meant to text you that I wasn’t goin’ this week but I guess I got distracted.”

Sam shook his head. “Man, what the hell you and your buddy been up to that’s got you forgettin’ to drag my ass up and down the track?”

Steve snorted a brief laugh then paused, realizing that Sam was serious. He frowned. “Uh… my ‘buddy’?” he asked, clearly confused.

“Stevie, what the hell?” a gruff voice called; Sam could hear heavy footsteps muted against carpet and a dark-haired man appeared in the open doorway of Steve’s bedroom. “I thought you were comin’ back to bed.”

“Yeah, in a minute, Buck,” Steve muttered, hand on the back of his neck as a light pink blush began creeping from his ears to his cheeks and down his chest.

His chest, Sam realized. His bare chest. His bare chest because he was standing there in his underwear with a large and very pronounced hickey standing out about half an inch above the waistband.

“Uh…” Sam uttered, and swallowed hard.

“Hey, you gotta be Wilson, right?” the man in the doorway said as his eyes lit upon where Sam sat on the couch. That in itself should have given him pause; he knew Steve’s apartment was small, a detective’s salary not amounting to all that much and with Steve being as frugal as he was -- living on the sixth floor without a damn elevator -- his place was efficient but not exactly luxurious. Steve had told him excitedly that his old friend was moving in weeks ago and Sam hadn’t even stopped to think that Steve’s place only had one bedroom.

Sam didn’t even have to look to know it had to be Bucky Barnes standing there. He had heard enough about him over the years -- even seen him regularly in the photo Steve kept on his desk, the two of them grinning at a camera somewhere in the desert, arms over each other’s shoulders, sweating through their fatigues and half-leaning on a jeep painted in sand-colored camouflage. 

He didn’t _have_ to look, but he did, because he was beginning to suspect there was more going on here than he realized.

Bucky was leaner than he looked in the photo, muscle mass lost no doubt during his long recovery in the base hospital in Germany. He was wearing grey sleep pants hanging a little too low on his hips, his hair as much of a wreck as Steve’s, dark brown and longer than Sam would have expected from a military man.

He supposed there wasn’t much call for a crew cut while recuperating.

The scars were in a heavy pattern all over his left arm and onto his shoulder, inching a little ways onto his chest. There were surgical scars, long pink and white lines, interspersed between deeper pitted wounds long since healed over, scar tissue pink and smooth. As Sam watched, the fingers of his left hand twitched and a small tremor swept up to his elbow, the muscles clearly contracting beneath the skin. Bucky barely seemed to notice.

What stood out the most was the tattoo that circled his hip, black lettering that was immediately familiar to Sam; where Bucky stood, Sam could only see the last two words: _the line_. 

Bucky didn’t have to move for Sam to know the rest; he’d seen it’s twin on Steve more times than he could remember, on the back of his right shoulder.

 _Til the end of the line_.

“Shit,” Sam spoke suddenly, feeling like the biggest moron and the biggest jerk on the face of the planet. No wonder Steve hadn’t let him know he’d be missing the gym; he was practically on his damn honeymoon. “I’ll… uh… leave you guys to it…” he said quickly, getting to his feet.

“No, hey, this is good, been wantin’ to meet ya,” Bucky told him, crossing into the room. He threw an arm roughly over Steve’s shoulders. “Had to meet the man keepin’ an eye on my best guy here,” he went on, punctuating his words with a loud smacking kiss to Steve’s cheek.

“ _Buck_ ”, Steve hissed, clearly embarrassed. “I don’t think… I don’t think he knew we were, you know. You know?”

Bucky frowned, glancing first at Sam and then back to Steve. “How the hell did he not know? Didn’t you ask him yet?”

“Uh… ask me what?” Sam asked, suddenly feeling as confused as Bucky looked.

Bucky seemed offended. “Did this punk not ask you to be his Best Man yet?”

“Jesus, Bucky,” Steve groaned, pushing him gently. “Did you have to do that? I was gonna ask!”

“...the fuck?! Steve, we just decided to move the ceremony up and you haven’t even asked your partner to be your Best Man yet or apparently even _told him you were gettin’ hitched_ ,” Bucky scolded, shaking his head. He glanced back to Sam. “You’re good for Tuesday afternoon, yeah? Want somethin’ lowkey and fast, since Steve’ll be awhile before he can get any more time off.”

Mutely, Sam nodded. Steve wasn’t due back to work for another week; clearly he would be making the most of that time off.

“Yeah, uh, so, I’m gonna go,” Sam said, pointing at the door. “Nice to meet you, Bucky, and please tell your idiot boyfriend - _fiance_ \- to text me the details for Tuesday. Clint and Nat are going to show if they find out so, be prepared for that. You two just… go back to whatever you were doing.”

Steve gave an exasperated groan. “I figured as much,” he relented with a sigh.

“See, Steve, I like this guy,” Sam heard Bucky saying as he headed for the door. “He’s got great ideas. Whatta ya say we just go back to bed, get back to whatever we were doing?”

Sam turned to glance at them just as he reached to open the door, catching an eyeful of Steve sighing, head tilted back while Bucky mouthed at his throat. He smiled to himself as he stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

His partner, his best friend, was getting married to a guy he loved and had clearly loved for a long damn time, and he was going to the Best Man at the ceremony. No, Sam wasn’t jealous at all. 

He was happy as hell.


End file.
